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To Jug Hare

A stew of hare pieces cooked with bacon or hashed beef, herbs, onions, bay leaves, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Jug Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the hare pieces with salt and mixed spices.

  2. Place them in a jugging can that just holds them.

Cook

  1. Add bacon or hashed beef, a faggot of herbs, and onions with cloves.

  2. Include bay leaves and lemon rind.

  3. Cover and cook gently until done.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Onion + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,901 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Beef + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle cooking in its own juices.
Bacon or hashed beef
Adds fat and savoury flavour that enriches the cooking liquid and the meat.
Onions
Release sweetness and body into the juices as they cook slowly.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oil that lifts the rich, meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Cover and cook gently until done. Slow, gentle heat in a tightly covered vessel lets tough hare meat break down and stay moist. Boiling hard or letting the jug dry out would toughen the meat and concentrate the juices unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, onion, clove):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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